The Complementary Gender

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles, turn with me to Genesis chapter 2.
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When you get to Genesis chapter 2, hold your place at verse 18.
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I find it hard to believe that any adult who is living in America today could not see that we are living in and witnessing all around us a major moral revolution.
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Now, I understand if a child wouldn't recognize it, because they're growing up in it.
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But those of us who are adults, those of us who have lived for decades and some many decades have to notice that in the years, the last few years, there have been major events that have occurred which many of you probably never believed you would ever see in your lifetime.
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In fact, recently Pastor David Jeremiah, I'm sure some of you are familiar with Dr.
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Jeremiah, wrote a book, and the title of the book was, I Never Thought I'd See the Day, in which he outlines nine cultural developments which he said that he never believed would occur in the short span of his own lifetime.
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One of the most scandalous of the quote-unquote new norms is the ever increasing tendency of people to blur the lines between manhood and womanhood.
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It seems like everywhere we look, there are attempts to remove any type of distinctions which would be common to men and women exclusively.
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Even the popular website Facebook, which I know many of you, and I'm on it too, have been on and seen on Facebook now.
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They have decided that they are no longer going to allow people to define themselves only as men and women.
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Now on Facebook, a person can define up to 51 different genders.
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These include agender, someone who refuses to identify exclusively with one or the other.
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Androgynous, someone who says they identify with both men and women.
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There is the neither category, someone who says they refuse any label whatsoever.
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And they go on to include gender fluid, gender diverse, gender variant, gender non-conforming, and so on and so on, etc.
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If it sounds like madness, there's a reason for it.
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It is madness.
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But Facebook is not alone in its provision of the absurd and the new cultural morality.
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Many public schools across America are having to deal with legal issues which are associated with what's become the gender issue, the gender-related issue.
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Many schools are having to make difficult decisions regarding what to do with boys who identify themselves as girls and likewise girls who identify themselves as boys.
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And they're also having to deal with society supporting these assumptions.
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I want you to consider the words of Oakland, California, psychologist Diane Aronsaf.
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This is what she said.
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She said, and I quote, This generation is really challenging the gender norms we all grew up with.
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A lot of youths say they won't be bound by boys having to wear this or girls having to wear that.
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For them, gender is a creative playing field, end quote.
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Just consider the massive implications of that statement.
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Gender is a creative playing field.
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What a tremendous shift in the moral conscience of a nation it must be to ever support a statement that is so obviously fraught with error.
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Beloved, this morning I wanted to take the opportunity, as it is a day wherein we celebrate motherhood, to look at the subject of gender from a biblical perspective.
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I imagine that this is not one of the popular subjects this morning.
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But I think it's an important subject.
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And since it is Mother's Day, we're going to focus on the female gender, the woman.
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I want us to see that God did create men and women differently from one another, something that most of us know innately, but yet is denied that men and women are different.
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There's this push for absolute equality, there's this push to see everyone as the same and not recognize the God-ordained roles that men and women have been given.
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And as a result, we see that in our land there is so much confusion for our young people.
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There is so much confusion in our politics.
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There is so much confusion in our families.
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So today I want to look at this subject.
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I want us to see that God did create men and women differently from one another.
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And He did so that they would complement one another.
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And I hope to show the blessings which result from a proper understanding of this complementary relationship.
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While the world is desperately trying to eliminate gender distinctions, I want us to celebrate that God made man and He made woman differently.
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And that difference is by design.
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So let's stand together and read Genesis 2.
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We stand to give honor and reverence to the Word of God.
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We're going to read the creation of woman from Genesis 2, verse 18 and following.
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Then the Lord God said, It is not good that man should be alone.
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I will make him a helper fit for him.
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Now out of the ground the Lord had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.
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And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.
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The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field.
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But for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him.
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So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man.
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And while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.
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And the rib that the Lord God had taken from man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
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Then the man said, This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.
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She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.
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Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife.
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They shall become one flesh.
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The man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
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Father in heaven, as we seek to understand this passage and better understand why you created man and woman, I pray first and foremost, as always, that you would keep me from error.
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And I pray that you would open the hearts of your people to the truth.
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Give them minds that are attentive to what is being said and that your Holy Spirit would ultimately teach them today.
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This is our prayer in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior.
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Amen.
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Many years ago, within the church and Christianity as a whole, there began to arise a debate regarding the specific roles of men and women in the church.
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How are men and women supposed to behave in the church? How are men and women supposed to take offices in the church? And there basically were two sides of the argument.
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One was called complementarianism.
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It comes from the word complement.
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And I want you to take note of where it says the complementary gender, that it is not complement as if to say something nice about someone.
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That's complement with an I.
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Complement in this sense is the word complete.
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One completes the other.
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The two together make one whole.
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That's where the word complement comes here.
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And that's the complementarian view, that men and women both have different roles to play within the church and within society as a whole, and together they complement or complete one another.
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On the opposite side, there was something called egalitarianism.
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Egalitarianism said there should be no distinctions made regarding men and women because we're all equal in Christ.
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And of course, they look to the passage in Galatians where it says, in Christ there is neither young nor old, neither male nor female.
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And they use that verse and they grab onto that verse as the verse that says, well, there shouldn't be any distinctions that are made.
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However, that particular verse is talking about our union with Christ and the fact that just because a man or a woman are different by gender, it doesn't mean that they're any less valuable in Christ.
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But it doesn't take away the distinction.
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And I remember having this conversation with someone once who was arguing that passage.
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I said, so what you're telling me then is since my child is saved and I'm saved, that I don't have any authority over my child? Because we're both in Christ.
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Are you saying that we're absolutely equal in my home? Well, no, I'm not saying that.
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So you're saying that even though we're equal in Christ, that there is some distinctions that must be made? Well, yeah, I guess so.
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All right.
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Now we can go somewhere.
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So before you run to Galatians 3 and you try to make that argument, think it through.
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Think it through.
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There is distinctions which are made in Scripture.
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From a biblical perspective, there is no doubt that complementarianism is what the Bible teaches.
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Those who teach the egalitarian perspective must reinterpret or simply ignore the many passages which speak of God's differing design for men and women.
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As Dr.
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John MacArthur has said and even wrote a book by this title, Men and Women are Different, and the title of his book was Different by Design.
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God designed them differently.
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He designed us differently for a purpose.
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So when we consider the idea of design, we look back at when God designed man and He designed woman, and we see why He designed them differently.
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The first three chapters of Genesis is the opening of the Bible, but it's also the opening of mankind.
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It's the understanding of how mankind came to be.
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The word Genesis means beginnings.
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It comes from Latin.
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It means beginnings.
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And so when we see this word Genesis, we know that this is the beginnings not only of the created world, but it's the beginnings of mankind.
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Genesis chapter 1 tells us about God's creation in those six precious days.
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And Genesis chapter 3 tells us about mankind's rebellion against God and the subsequent judgments that came as a result.
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We often talk about the fact that we live in a Genesis 3 world because we live in a fallen world.
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We live in a world post-sin.
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But there's a precious chapter between Genesis 1, which gives us the outline of creation, and Genesis 3, which gives us the beginning of the fall and the effects of the fall.
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There's a precious chapter which lands right between Genesis 1 and Genesis 3.
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Genesis chapter 2, which gives an expanded view of God's creation of man.
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The imago Dei.
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The image bearer of God.
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We bear the image of God.
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It's this moment where Moses in writing, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, steps back and he says, and this is how mankind was created.
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He was created differently than everything else.
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Everything else God spoke into existence, but man was formed out of the dust of the ground.
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So in Genesis chapter 2, we see this outline.
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We see in verse 7 that man is formed out of the dust of the ground.
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In verse 8, God establishes a place for him to live.
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In verse 9, He says that this place will give him food.
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It will be a garden and rivers will flow through it.
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And it tells us what those rivers were called from verses 10 through verse 14.
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He then establishes the responsibilities of this man to work and keep the garden.
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Verse 15, then God establishes a boundary for the man, telling him you can eat of anything that's in this garden, except this one tree.
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This is your one law.
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This is your singular commandment.
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Don't eat of that tree.
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The tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
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And it is at this point, after verse 17, that we arrive at verse 18, wherein God chooses to create a second human being.
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God has created the man.
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He's placed him in the garden.
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He's given him a job.
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He's given him a rule.
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He's given him a life, but He's not given him a partner yet.
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That's what's coming.
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He's going to create a new human being, a different human being.
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And she would be different both scientifically and in regard to her role in relationship.
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Scientifically, she would have a different biology and a different physiology.
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This is what, in fact, if you go back to Genesis 1, where it says male and female, He created them.
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Male and female are scientific terms referencing different biology, different physiology.
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That's what that references.
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But in chapter 2, He focuses on manhood and womanhood.
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Not the scientific difference, but the gender difference.
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The difference in type.
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Masculine and feminine.
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Man and woman.
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And manhood and womanhood are established for us in Genesis chapter 2.
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Gender does not refer to the scientific difference, but it refers rather to our social difference, our familial difference, our behaviors, our activities, not just what we are scientifically, but who we are in the world.
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So God is here creating a different being.
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So I want us to begin to look at the text.
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We're going to begin with verse 18.
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And we're going to look first at the purpose of the complementary gender.
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The purpose of this complementary gender.
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Verse 18, Then the Lord God said, It is not good that man should be alone.
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I will make him a helper fit for Him.
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Now there are two questions which arise from this text.
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Number one, why? Why is it not good that man should be alone? Why is it not good that he should be alone? God just tells us that's the truth.
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It is not good that man should be alone.
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But why? God created the world.
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He created everything in it.
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He ordained that everything that He created was good, except this.
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Notice up until this point He's been saying, and He created this, and it was good, and He created that, and it was good, it was good, it was good, it was good.
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But it's not good now.
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This is in the midst of the sixth day, by the way.
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This is all encompassed in this one moment of time in the sixth day.
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Because man and woman were both created that day, but not at the same time.
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Because God created man, and He says, but it's not good yet.
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And He hasn't called it good yet.
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But why is it not good? It's not good because man, without the complementary gender of woman, has a natural deficiency.
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Yes, men, without women we are deficient.
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I figure we all appreciate hearing that, especially the women.
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It's true.
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Man, apart from woman, has a natural deficiency.
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Not the least of which is the inability to procreate and fill the earth.
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That's what we've been commissioned to do.
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Go and fill the earth.
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And that is not possible without the complementary gender.
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But procreation is not the only deficiency, mind you.
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I want to make sure this is clear.
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God could have given man the ability to reproduce in some other way.
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God certainly had that capacity.
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The real deficiency for man is not the ability to procreate.
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The real deficiency of man was the relationship which comes with the woman.
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Man needed a being who would complement him in relationship.
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One who would not be exactly the same, but one who would have the ability to complete that which he lacked.
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There is no complementary relationship between two men or two women, as both represent a mirror of one another.
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This is one of the great difficulties that people can't get past.
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But it is the great difficulty of the new movement of homosexual marriage.
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There is no such thing as a mirror image complement.
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A mirror doesn't complement itself.
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It simply reflects itself.
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And two men reflect one another.
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They do not complement one another as God's design intended.
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Man has a deficiency and another man cannot fill that deficiency.
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God chooses to create for him another one who would complete this deficiency, a different kind of the same order.
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Now, I do want to address something kind of as an aside, but it's an important question, because some of you might be thinking, well, what if a person chooses to remain single? Are they wrong? Now, we are now...
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Number one, we're in a Genesis 3 world.
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We're post-sin.
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And we're also in a situation wherein we are not where Adam was, not only in his sinless nature, but in the fact that there were only man and woman at that point in time.
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There is a sense in which marriage is not God's will for everyone.
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Jesus tells us that some people are meant to be single, but it is a gift.
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God has gifted some people with the ability for singleness so that they could serve God completely and fully in their singular position.
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But, beloved, I have to tell you, if that is you, God bless you.
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It is a blessing that God has given that to you, but it's not the norm.
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It is not the norm.
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Not saying that you're not normal.
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Let me make sure I'm not saying it in a way that you might take offense to it.
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What I'm saying is that it is a rarity that a person finds himself or herself without the need or longing for intimacy.
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It is a rare thing that a man or a woman would not have the urge for intimacy in a relationship.
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But if that is you, you are not a second-class citizen.
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You're not a second-class Christian.
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God has gifted you to that, and God bless you for that.
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But what we mustn't miss is God didn't bless Adam for that.
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God didn't bless Adam with the gift of singleness.
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God created Adam with a natural deficiency, one that could only be filled by the second person created, and that was Eve.
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Adam was not gifted to singleness.
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Adam was gifted, as most men are, with a need for completion.
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And that's what Eve was.
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Now, I want to ask another question from verse 18 before we move on.
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What does the word helper mean? It says a helper was created for him.
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From a biblical perspective, the word helper is a person who does for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
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That is what the Hebrew underlying word here is.
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A helper is one who does for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
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In fact, God is called our helper many times throughout Scripture.
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I encourage your looking up this week Hebrews 13.6 where it says God is our helper.
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But also, most of you are familiar with...
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you might even be familiar with the Greek word.
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How many of you know the Greek word paraclete? You've heard the word paraclete.
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The word paraclete is the word that Jesus used for the Holy Spirit.
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He says, I will send to you another comforter.
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That was the King James Version, right? You guys remember that verse? It says, if I go away, I will send to you another comforter.
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In the ESV, that word is translated helper.
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I will send to you a helper.
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Because the word paraclete, the Greek word underlying that, is one who is called alongside of you.
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The one who is called to come alongside.
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As Christ walked in ministry with His apostles, so too did the Holy Spirit come after Christ's ascension to walk alongside His disciples.
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So we go back to why is woman created? She is created as man's completion.
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She is created to be the helper.
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She is created to do what He cannot do.
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And fulfill that role.
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This is where we get the foundation for the idea of complementarianism.
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The woman is intended to complete the man.
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She is not meant to be everything He is.
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She is meant to be everything He is not.
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See, the world is so convinced that we have to tell ourselves that men and women have to be everything the other one is.
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That's not the point.
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The point is that the woman would be everything He is not.
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The word fit, here where it says a helper fit for Him, means according to the opposite.
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According to the opposite of Him.
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The two genders are meant to be opposite of one another.
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Not opposed, but to be complementary.
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To be what the other one is not.
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In short, the purpose of the complementary gender is that the two would complete one another.
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Now let's look at the establishment of the complementary gender.
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This is verse 19.
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We've looked at the purpose.
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Now we look at the establishment.
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Verse 19 says, Now out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.
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And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.
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The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field.
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But for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him.
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Now this really is kind of a strange passage.
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Because it seems as if Adam is seeking a complementary partner among the created order.
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He's looking within the animals to see if there's anyone that complements him.
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But you see, this is the genius of God's plan.
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God had him name all the animals to look among them to see that there was not one that would complete him and to demonstrate one important truth.
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That among all God's creation, there was none like unto Adam.
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There was none who had been given the image of God.
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There was none that would truly fit and be his complement.
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Look at all the animals.
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Look at them.
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Name them.
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See, none of them fit.
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Animals are not people, though we love them.
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We love our animals.
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We love our pets.
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We love all these animals that we love.
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But we know they're not made in the image of God.
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They're not people.
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Sometimes they're nicer than people.
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But they're not people.
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And that's the point.
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Adam looks out at these creatures and he says, None is like me.
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And it says, But for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him.
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None of them made sense to be his complement.
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So, verse 21, The Lord caused a deep sleep to fall upon man.
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And while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up the place with its flesh.
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That was the first surgery ever.
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It was the God taking this part of Adam.
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Also, interestingly enough, historically speaking, the man who invented the concept of anesthesia to put someone to sleep while they are having this procedure, any type of procedure, he actually said he was inspired by this particular verse that it would help if a person was asleep while you cut into them.
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That makes sense.
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And so it says here that in verse 22, In the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
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Then the man said, This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh, and she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.
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This is the moment for Adam.
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The moment has come.
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God has created this second being made in his image.
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And Adam says the words, and this is more forceful in the Hebrew than it is in the English.
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At last.
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Because he spent the time looking through all the animals, and none of them fit, none of them work.
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At last.
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Bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh, one who is like me.
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Finally, there is one who fits the need.
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Many great preachers have noted from this passage that the woman was taken from man's side.
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Not from his feet to be trampled on or from his head to lord over him, but from his side to demonstrate that she was his complement, his helper.
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It's interesting to note that the Holy Spirit again is called the one who walks alongside of us.
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And certainly men who have godly wives would say that there have been times where we have seen the Holy Spirit's work in our lives through our wives.
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So the woman was created out of man's side to be his completion.
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And now we see the blessing of the complementary gender.
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The blessing of the complementary gender comes in verse 24.
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Because the blessing which comes along with God creating a second person was that now he gets to establish a family.
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Verse 24.
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Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother.
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And somebody might say, now how does this make sense? Adam was created by God.
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God was his father.
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There was no mother.
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God was created out of dust and ground.
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Why this passage even? Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother.
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Because this is establishing precedence.
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This is establishing the marriage precedence.
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Every marriage I've ever preached, I've read this verse.
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Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother.
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And shall hold fast the King James to cleave unto his wife.
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And the two become one flesh.
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A family is born when a man and a woman come together in marriage.
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It's established on a man and a woman making sacred vows.
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Unbreakable, unbreachable vows before God.
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From that flows children and grandchildren.
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Which are blessings to the parents.
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And the opportunity for what Dr.
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Godey-Bockham calls a multi-generational legacy.
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Many of you are a result of a multi-generational legacy.
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You are the result of your parents passionately demonstrating to you their submission to God and love for Jesus Christ.
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And through their example, you came to know Christ as your Lord as well.
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Some of you are the result.
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You are one in a line of a multi-generational legacy.
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But yet, I also know there are some of you who are not.
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Some of you have parents who do not know Christ.
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Some of you have parents who do not love Christ and do not love his church.
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But guess what? You now have the opportunity to begin that legacy.
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You have the opportunity to start a fresh legacy of your own.
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You can show your children love for Christ.
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You can show your children fidelity to God.
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And you cannot make them be saved.
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You cannot save them yourselves.
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But you can be an example of God's grace and mercy and love and devotion to them so that they would know the love of God through you.
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And that is what you can do.
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And that is how we establish that legacy of the family.
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And that would be without possibility if it were not for God having created something called the family.
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Now, this blessing is also compounded, and we're going to end here at verse 25, because it's compounded by another blessing.
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A blessing that comes in marriage.
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It's found in verse 25 and sometimes is easily overlooked.
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So let me just read it to you.
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And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
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Now, I realize when I read that to you, we know that the immediate context of that is referring to the fact that this is before sin came into the world and there was no reason to feel shame.
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So there was no reason to cover anything.
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And that was the reason for the nakedness.
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But I want to share with you something that is a very precious truth.
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The reason why there was no shame in their presence with one another is because their relationship was not burdened by sin.
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When sin came in, they covered themselves.
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But they covered themselves not just from God.
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They didn't just hide from God.
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They hid from each other.
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But, beloved, one of the precious realities of marriage is supposed to be that we now have a relationship wherein we can be naked, not just physically, but emotionally, spiritually, in every way, naked and unashamed.
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Unashamed.
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That's the blessing of marriage.
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And that's the danger of divorce.
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Because what divorce is, is two people who have been absolutely naked with one another, physically, spiritually, and emotionally.
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They have been totally naked with one another and one has rejected the other.
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Or they have rejected one another.
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And it divides what was supposed to be a forever union.
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Beloved, the beauty that is supposed to come with marriage is the beauty of trust.
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The beauty of commitment.
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A covenant.
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Unbreakable.
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Today is Mother's Day.
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It is a day wherein many all around our nation are celebrating the blessing of motherhood.
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So too should we celebrate that blessing.
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But, beloved, today I want to encourage you also, while you're celebrating the blessing of Mother's Day, I want you also to be celebrating and meditating on the blessing of womanhood in general.
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In Christ we share an equality in that we have all been made alive in Him.
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But that equality of grace does not mean we are all the same.
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God has given the world men and women for a reason.
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He has made them distinct for a reason.
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And we should celebrate manhood and womanhood as God designed them.
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Masculinity and femininity as God designed them.
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We should not conform to this world which is always seeking to eliminate God-designed distinctions, but instead we should celebrate those distinctions.
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We should praise God for His creative genius in establishing from the beginning man and woman, the perfect complementary pairing to bring about the blessings of marriage and family in His world.
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Father, thank You for this opportunity that we've had to look at Your Word and to study the creation of woman and how in creating woman You created this thing we call the family, this thing we call marriage.
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And You created it in accordance with Your own will and desire for what it would be.
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It would be a symbol of a covenant.
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It would be a covenant between a man and a woman which also symbolized the covenant that You made with us when You promised that You would save us through Your Son.
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And we know, Lord, that when we see Christ, we see Him as the husband of the church and the church as His bride.
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Again, simulating that representative relationship.
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Father, we thank You for that blessing.
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I pray even now, Lord, that everyone that is here present would first and foremost understand how important it is to be a part of that bride of Christ, to be a part of His body, to come to Him in faith and repentance and to trust in Him as the only Lord and Savior that You have given to mankind.
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I pray also, Lord, for an understanding for all of us of the value of the family, the value of marriage, and the value of women as You have created them with this special purpose in our world.
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We pray for our nation.
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We pray for the madness which arises all around us.
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We pray for revival and change in our world.
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And we pray for strength to stand against error, to glorify You through the preaching of Your truth.
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In Christ's name we pray and for His sake, Amen.
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Stand with us now as we sing.
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If you have a need for prayer, we encourage you to come.